Ask Me Anything! (FormSpring)

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

He is attractive, and with appearances in all three of the upcoming Twilight Saga films (November’s New Moon and Breaking Dawn and Eclipse, slated for 2010 and 2011, respectively), audiences will have a plethora of opportunities to see so for themselves.

“In Eclipse, you’re not going to see much, but Breaking Dawn is an opportunity for me to really show his power and if they allow me to just let loose. It’s really exciting.”

"He," of course, is Demetri, Bewley’s vampire alter ego. He describes his character as, “vicious, aggressive, dark and efficient. Lethal. But at the same time, he’s not evil; just by our standards, the things he does are evil.”

The way Bewley sees it, Demetri “has a lot of misplaced energy, or a lot of unused energy, and that kind of manifests in his behavior. When I first started thinking about the character, I did the whole animal thing, and I just worked out that he was this killer housecat -- just in the way he is and his attention is fairly ADD. But his attention is always towards something that’s moving or something that’s happening, and he wants to be part of that and he wants to get his hand on it. It’s constant. He just wants to run or chase. But he’s very kind of confined within this sort of mafioso arrangement that the Volturi coven is. He’s contained. And he just wants to go. And this is since Jane and Alec have come on the scene, because they are now the heads, and there’s no more fighting, so he’s kind of bored. He’s looking for action.”

Prior to conjuring up these characteristics (he even ran Demetri’s back story by series author Stephenie Meyer), Bewley had to earn the role. He auditioned twice for Demetri and once for the role of Marcus. He was “elated” to get the part of the Volturi tracker, as he feels he and the vampire share similar qualities.

“It makes it easier, yeah, number one. Number two, I think right now, I think I just have to be, in an acting sense, fairly loyal to the energy I’ve got as a person. And right now, I’ve got a lot of energy, and I want that to be shown in everything I do. Demetri is a character who hasn’t really -- in Eclipse, you’re not going to see much, but Breaking Dawn is an opportunity for me to really show his power, and if they allow me to just let loose … it’s really exciting.”

Eclipse, the Saga’s third installment, is currently being filmed in Vancouver. The film, following the series’ habit of bringing in a new director for each installment, is being directed by David Slade, best known for the dark comedy Hard Candy and another atmospheric vampire flick, 30 Days of Night.

“Eclipse is going to be dark, and it’s going to be dreadful," Bewley says, "It’s going to be gory and brutal.”

If the hype surrounding New Moon is any indication of the success Eclipse will experience, then the third film is going to be huge, and Bewley, huger with it. He attributes the film franchise’s success thus far to one key element.

“They go insane because Rob did a really good job in the first one. That’s why they’re obsessed with vampires … Those two are just brilliant together. They really are. It’s a perfect match. No one has ever really questioned whether they were the right people or not, they’ve always just been perfect. Really well cast."

Of his co-star Kristen Stewart, often criticized in tab-blogs for being standoffish, Bewley says, “I think she could be a lot like Bella. She doesn’t want too much attention, and she picks her friends wisely and she’s someone who just wants to do her work. Not everyone is going to be like Jamie [Campbell Bower] or me or someone who loves this whole attention thing and laps it up and sees it as a life experience. Some people are more reserved, just ‘I just want to keep myself to myself and do my thing and sorry if I can’t give all of my energy to you.’ Maybe it’s because I have so much energy."

Bewley hasn’t yet reached the tabloid-cover level of fame, a la Rob and Kristen, but he has gotten a taste of what his co-stars’ very public lives are like.

“When it first happened, I started getting rounds of phone calls because my number was on my website. When it was first announced, those first few days were kind of weird. It was like, OK ... and you start Googling yourself and there’s more and more and more and more stuff.

I just worry about what’s going to come out because I’ve had a big past and I’ve done a lot of things before and I’m ultra-paranoid someone’s going to come on there and say something. But it doesn’t happen like that. Everyone just watches and smiles and enjoys it for you.”

Considering that Bewley has gone from cab driver to major motion picture vampire royalty in a few short years, it's likely that the characters of his past, whoever they may be, are indeed smiling. What's certain is that his thousands of new fans are too.